Providing a much-needed check on mythopoeic archaeological inference, but also on occasion commenting on the important discoveries of the day. Every effort is made to keep the invective to a dull roar. Best plug your ears!

Thursday, 20 October 2011

There Are No Human Races: Final Part of The Evolutionary Biology of Race

I’d like to wind up this series on the evolutionary biology of 'race' by summarizing a few points.

First, there are no races in the biological sense in humans—Homo sapiens is a widely distributed, polytypic species, exhibiting considerable genetic diversity within and between the historically defined 'races'.

Second, only a very few heritable traits have been used to construct the racial categories that most of us grow up with.

Third, it's virtually impossible to come up with a racial classification that bears any relation to reality—as soon as one begins to take account of more than a few relatively unimportant traits, the whole idea of racial classification falls flat on its face.

Fourth, unless one is prepared to argue that each and every one of us is a distinct race, the notion of human races has no basis in biology.

As such, we must conclude that the notion of human races is grounded not in biology, but in the bigotry inherent in the racial worldview—'races' are part of a masking ideology that perpetuates the social and economic dominance of the ruling strata of society.All people ought to be given the respect they deserve as members of the unitary human species, and never judged according to the colour of their skin or the culture of their kin.

NO worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.Comforter, where, where is your comforting?Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chiefWoe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing—Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No ling-ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief’.

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fallFrightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheapMay who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our smallDurance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: allLife death does end and each day dies with sleep.

About the author

My primary research interest is and always has been advancing knowledge of how hominids became human. Modern humans exploded out of Africa between about 40 and 50 kyr ago, and there is abundant evidence of recognizably human behaviour from at least that time in Africa, and across Europe, Asia and Australia. Signature modern human behaviour has not been documented unequivocally for the Neanderthals and their contemporaries, the skeletally modern members of the genus Homo (e.g. at Skhul Cave). Instead of recognizably modern implements and other hallmarks of modern human behaviour, in the Middle Palaeolithic we see lithic technology organized around flakes, obtained through bifacial reduction, some platform preparation, and retouch; no unequivocal use of bone other than as an analogue for stone; no evidence of space use that could be recognized as human; no unequivocal evidence of purposeful burial, no unequivocal representational imagery. Achievements include a BA in Archaeology (Simon Fraser University, 1987), “Grave Shortcomings: The Evidence for Neandertal Burial” (Current Anthropology, 1989), a Ph.D. in Anthropology (University of California at Berkeley, 1994), a lectureship in Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology at the University of New England, NSW, Australia, from 1996 to 1999, “Middle Palaeolithic Burial is Not a Dead Issue: The View from Qafzeh, Saint-Césaire, Kebara, Amud, and Dederiyeh” (Journal of Human Evolution, 1999), and, in aggregate, 27 months of field experience in southern central British Columbia (Salishan), Israel (Middle Palaeolithic), France (Mesolithic), Australia, California’s Coast Range, its Central Valley and Great Basin desert regions.

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